48th Anniversary: NYSC Coordinator Advocates Unity, One Nigeria
Daily Chronicle
Bauchi State Coordinator National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Hamisu Abubakar, on Saturday advocated for one indivisible Nigeria where unity and peaceful coexistence would be maintained.
Abubakar made the call at the state’s orientation camp in Wailo village, during the celebration of the organisation’s 48th anniversary coupled with the 2021 Batch A Stream II orientation cultural carnival for the corps members on the camp.
Speaking before the commencement of the orientation cultural carnival, the NYSC coordinator, said that this year’s carnival was a unique one as it coincided with the organisation’s 48th years of existence.
According to him, NYSC was very keen about the unity of the country, hence the display of placards by the corps members in different platoons, advocating for unity and peace among all and sundry in Nigeria during the occasion.
He said that the cultural carnival would add more colour to the celebration, adding that the anniversary was to strengthen the scheme and to remind Nigerians that they were an indivisible nation.
“We believe that the cultural display of different cultural heritage by corps members today will go a long way in reminding Nigerians that we are an indivisible country.
“From the placards displayed, when we say NYSC is for the unity of Nigeria, we are not only making a display but equally, being under the umbrella of NYSC, all corps members during the service year and beyond are expected to shun any act that will divide us.
“It is also for all corps members to know that NYSC is for the unity of this great country. Whatever we are doing, we should put this great nation first,” he said.
Also speaking, Mr Sebastian Josiah, Head of Man ‘O’ war at the orientation camp, said that NYSC was the largest organisation that brings people of diverse religion, culture, ethnicity under one roof.
He said such organisations or schemes should not be scrapped, rather be sustained.
“Some of these corpers have never been to Bauchi before, they have not been up North and they schooled in their various states.
“If you move people like that up North and they now see that what they hear on news is totally different from what is on ground here.
“They discovered that apart from the issue of insecurity we are hearing, they found the people very accommodating.
“We have people from different ethnic groups, different religions and they have been staying in the same hostel and we have not had cases of people fighting over religion or ethnicity differences.
“NYSC is the only large gathering where you have people of such a background staying for three weeks and you don’t have issues of people dragging over religion and tribe. I think it should be sustained,” he said.
Some of the activities at the cultural carnival to mark the corps’ 48th anniversary include cultural dance, poem recitation.
Others include procession of corps members displaying placards in support of unity and one Nigeria as well as singing amongst others.